


phantom pain

by FoxNonny



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Dissociative Episodes, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-Trespasser
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-18
Updated: 2018-07-18
Packaged: 2019-06-12 08:57:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15336360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FoxNonny/pseuds/FoxNonny
Summary: There are nights where Mahanon goes wandering.





	phantom pain

**Author's Note:**

> cw: for descriptions of dissociation; like legit please don't read this if that could be triggering for you

There are nights when Mahanon goes wandering, a hand clutching at the space where his left arm used to be.

Wanders, doesn't realize he's truly wandering, foot after stumbling foot, until he's outside under the night wind and stars, wondering how he got there. Most nights he wakes up from this, and he's in his bed again, unsure if the stars were a dream or...

But some nights he wakes up, feet on the grass, earth beneath him, stars above, and he still isn't sure. He's never really sure. 

Some nights he's stopped before he leaves the bed, the room, the cottage; a hand on his shoulder, shaking him awake. 

"Come back to bed, _kadan_ ," sometimes. 

"Come back to bed, _amatus_ ," others. 

Sometimes the voices are a dream, the hand is a dream, and he wakes in bed and he isn't really sure. Sometimes he thinks it's all a dream. Sometimes the night is only as real as a factor of dirt - if there are tracks from the door to the bed, it was real. If not, a dream. Usually. 

 

There are things he's seen that no one should have to see; not when he saw them, and how. 

There are things he's done that no one should have to do; not when he did them, and how. 

 

There are days in the garden, tilling one-handed, aided by magic, and he looks up to realize he doesn't know where he is. What day it is, what year. Everything tilts sideways and the earth under his hands means nothing, the past means nothing, and he could swear he has two hands and they're both clawing at his face and shoulders, trying to regain some sense of self. 

Sometimes it passes, like a cloud casting a long shadow. 

Sometimes, a voice, telling him: "Something you can see, something you can hear, something you can touch."

A gentle, one-eyed gaze some days, two sombre greys other days: something to see. 

A voice, lilting and polished some days, deep and coarse other days: something to hear.

A hand, reaching for his one hand, missing fingers some days, whole and adorned in golden rings other days: something to touch. 

Then his own voice, and he knows it's his because it rips something in him on its way out of his lungs; "I'm sorry," again, and again. 

"It's alright," he hears in return. "It's alright, it's alright."

 

If something isn't there anymore, it shouldn't hurt anymore. 

If the war is over, no battles should rage on in his dreams.

The dead shouldn't follow him through his nightmares into his waking hours, sometimes lurking in the corner of his vision, sometimes whispering in his ear. 

If he's not the Inquisitor anymore, he shouldn't still bear the title, and if he doesn't have a fucking left arm, he shouldn't wake the men he loves with screams of pain in the early hours for a wound that no longer exists. 

 

_I'm sorry. I'm sorry._

_It's alright. It's alright._

He isn't always like this, and that almost makes it worse. 

The long months of good days, strong days where he's here in the world and laughing, where he can touch and feel and hear and listen and see and understand, he starts to think that the haze is gone for good. The wandering nights. The days of not knowing. Hours passing, staring at walls, where did the afternoon go? Where did the week go, the month? He doesn't remember what it's like, he can forget, during the seasons where he's present. Where everything is blissfully real. 

And then he wakes up -  _or does he_ \- outside -  _or is he_ \- his left arm in agony -  _or is it_ \- and it all starts again. 

 

He wonders sometimes if he doesn't have more in common with the ghosts. 

 

"How did you survive this?" he asks one night, barely breathing, clinging to something he can see (Bull's chest, rising and falling, breathing), something he can hear (Bull's voice, low and coarse but real, thank fuck, real), something he can touch (Bull's hand wrapped tight around his, thumb rubbing gentle circles in his skin, clammy with cold sweats). "How are we both still here?"

"I'm still surviving it, _kadan_ ," says Bull, his voice heavy, and Mahanon knows the weight. "We all are."

"I'm sorry."

"It's alright." A kiss to sweat-soaked hair. "Like you said, we're both still here."

 

He wakes up one night to the sound of the front door creaking open. The bed is one man short. 

He finds Dorian outside beneath the stars, one uneasy foot before another, eyes open but not seeing, not hearing, not feeling. 

He takes Dorian's left arm and stops him, gently shaking him awake, bringing him back to himself, and Dorian turns. Sees him. Feels his hand on his arm. Hears him when he says, "Come back to bed, _vhenan_."

"I'm-" Dorian starts, and stops.

"You're here," says Mahanon, because he knows the question in his heart, having asked it so many times himself. "You're with me, and Bull. You're awake. This is real. Come back with me."

Dorian shakes his head, and Mahanon knows the cloud hasn't passed just yet, and may not pass till morning. May not pass for days. Weeks. Months. "I'm sorry."

"It's alright." Mahanon smiles, because he can smile tonight, and Dorian can't. Because some nights he can't smile, and Dorian can. Some nights neither of them can manage it and Bull has to smile for the two of them, and sometimes none of them can smile and they wait it out together, three men surviving a flood on a leaking, tipping raft. But tonight, he can smile. "It's alright, Dorian. I'll take you back in." 

Dorian follows him, and they all survive another night.

 

On the days Mahanon isn't there, the nights he wanders, the afternoons that stretch into dreams and there's no telling a waking mind from sleep, it doesn't feel like a passing thing. It feels like his life has become a long expanse of nothing, of forgotten weeks expanding into forgotten years, and time does not give him the balm of distance and healing. The times of normalcy feel like aberrations in the pattern, and every new depth of twisting grey feels like the one he won't come back from. 

But it never is. 

He clings to hope with his fingernails, just as he clung to life in the aftermath of an avalanche, just as he clung to the last of his senses and fell through the eluvian, because after a certain point you start to think, in an awfully pragmatic sense, that if you've survived this fucking long with all the ways the world has tried to break you, you might as well keep going. 

As long as we're both here, as long as we're all here, well. We're all still surviving. 

_Maybe not tonight,_  he thinks, letting Dorian, or Bull, or his own two feet guide him back into the house again.  _But one day, the world will make sense again._

And eventually, it does.   

**Author's Note:**

> hey I'm foxnonny and I have a dissociative disorder, and this is what it feels like, and as with most things I work through it by making my characters suffer whatever bullshit my brain is putting me through because why not (in case you're starting to for the love of god don't worry I've got people looking after me so we're all good in the hood on this end)


End file.
